


Take a Step Back and Look What You Did to Me

by I_stole_a_cannon



Series: Jedi's Guide to Love, Loss, and Desperation [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Anakin Skywalker is good with kids, Anakin stop getting your ships shot at, Gen, One Shot, droid updates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-11
Packaged: 2020-01-11 21:36:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18432566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_stole_a_cannon/pseuds/I_stole_a_cannon
Summary: "I didn't want to deal with other people at the moment so I went to go fix droids and what is Anakin Skywalker doing here?"OR: Padawans get angry and sometimes that's okay





	Take a Step Back and Look What You Did to Me

**Author's Note:**

> Ah yes the second part. As someone who is a self proclaimed terrible updater and also someone who has a bad habit of creating ideas and then swiftly abandoning them as quick as they were created, maybe it's a good sign this has a second part. Anyhow, the first in the vein of these stories that tackles the "hey Anakin is good with kids, maybe he should've been in charge of younglings instead of murder and all of this could've been avoided." enjoy.

Kladinestra was a lot of things as she made her way down to the hanger. She was tired, overwhelmed, tense, frustrated, but mostly she was just angry. One could go as far as to say that she was furious. And that wasn’t something a Jedi was supposed to be.

The incident that had gotten her to this point had happened this morning, she had come into the council chambers with her master, who more and more each day Kladinestra felt herself becoming distant from which she didn’t like to think about most days, and they were supposed to have a plan prepared for their next mission. Kladinestra had created three plans over the time they had been given to formulate one, each improving upon the last and leaving room for things to go wrong, like she had learned over the time at the temple, it tended to happen. Her master had rejected each one for more and more frivolous reasons. So, one could imagine her surprise when her master presented _her_ idea as their own. While Kladinestra tried to keep her cool, it was when the Council liked the idea enough to give it the go ahead, she blew up nearly decking her master with her fist. Instead she resorted to yelling, tearing into her in front of the Council. It was one thing to take credit for the idea, but the fact that she had _rejected it_ before and hadn’t bothered to tell Kladinestra they had gone back on their decision before confronting the Council. It felt like a straw _finally_ broke her and she finally expressed the anger that had been pent up for months. She managed to ignore the stern looks she was getting from Mace and Yoda and Ki Adi, but the disappointing look from Obi Wan was too much. So, with a fury, she stormed out and made her way to the elevator and down to the hanger. She needed to do something to be productive, and in an environment where she wouldn’t need to interact with other human beings. The elevator dinged and Kladinestra wandered out and consulted the manifests to see what ship had been really beat up. She force pulled her tools and walked over to one of the ships. She heard beeping next to her and she looked over, she looked over and smiled.

“Hey R7,” she said with a small smile. R7 beeped and nudged her legs. “Sorry, I gotta work on this ship.” She muttered. She opened her bag and heard more beeping.

“R7 seems to really want your attention.” Someone said to her side. Kladinestra jumped and looked over. There stood Master Anakin Skywalker, and immediately she felt the urge to go back for the door. Instead she seemed to be eased by Anakin chuckling slightly. “Relax, figured you could use another set of hands.” He said. Kladinestra nodded and sat down and pulled tools out. She went under the speeder and considered what was wrong with it.

“Do you know what the problem is with this one?” She asked.

“I think I got it shot at.” Anakin said with a chuckle. Kladinestra crawled out and found herself giving the young master a slight glare.

“Could I possibly get you to stop having that happen?” She asked. This is why she didn’t want to deal with people, she was still to snippy, still too curt to be dealing with people higher ranked than her.

“Only if the Separatists stop.” He replied not seeming to mind her tone. R7 beeped again and Kladinestra sighed.

“Okay fine, I’ll give you the upgrades I promised you.” She said. R7 let out what could only be described as happy beeps and opened her paneling. Kladinestra shifted how she was seated to face the droid, while pulling out her tools. Anakin still sat there, prepared to watch her work. Kladinestra looked down.

“You don’t have to help me with this, I know what I’m doing,” she said with a little sigh, she seemed to be saying that a lot lately.

“I know, figured you could use the company.” He said. She scoffed in response, rolling her eyes behind the droid.

“No offense Master Skywalker, but I came down here to _avoid_ dealing with people.” She said as she set to work on building the attachment, she was giving R7.

“I know the feeling,” he said. Kladinestra poked her head from around R7.

“You do?” She asked. She always knew Master Skywalker was what some would call “unconventional” from his rumored training to his current dark robes, Skywalker was who you went to if you wanted an out of the box solution. But this felt weird.

“Yeah, I mean, why do you think R2 has so many upgrades and that freighter still flies?” He asked. Kladinestra thought it over, she hadn’t worked much with R2, but had heard interesting things from the other droids about him. And while she _desperately_ wanted to fly the _Twilight_ , it was either always on missions or under repairs. She pulled herself back behind R7, trying to focus on the attachment again. “Can I ask what happened?”

“You can ask, but you might not get an answer.” Kladinestra muttered failing to hold her tongue for what felt like the millionth time today. Master Skywalker simply laughed and let her work, figuring she’d tell him in time. After she had constructed the attachment, she let out a sigh. “I kind of disrespected my master in front of the Council. And by that, I mean I yelled a lot and nearly punched them.” She muttered. Anakin almost didn’t hear it, but when he did, he furrowed his brow slightly.

“What brought this on?” He asked.

“A lot of little things, I guess. I’ve been feeling distant from them forever, I feel like we just keep going in this endless circle of “they’re right, I’m wrong, shut up” that isn’t productive for either of us. And when we got tasked to come up with a plan for a mission, I made the plan. I mean, I made three, but they kept rejecting each one for more and more stupid reasons until I gave up and said “fine, you think of something for once.” And then when we were supposed to present to the Council…” Kladinestra paused, she hadn’t realized she was starting to tear up and was quick to find a spot on her robes that was covered in machine gunk yet to wipe her eyes. “She passed off my last idea as her own and didn’t tell the Council I came up with it, refused to even acknowledge I was even going _on_ the mission. And I just got… so _angry,_ like this was always going to be the result. So, I blew up, and it would’ve been fine if Master Windu and Master Mundi weren’t giving me the stink eye. Master Kenobi just looked disappointed but that’s to be expected.” She said finding herself muttering the last part more to herself. Anakin found himself sympathizing with the girl, he’d been in that position a lot and it was clear this was something she’d been holding off for longer than she should have.

“I know the feeling.” He said. “Have you talked to your master about it?”

“Every time I try, I get shut out. It’s like there’s no trust anymore! Like, we’re stuck together because no one else would have me.” Kladinestra explained. She got her hands into R7 and started attaching the addition. Anakin poked his head around the droid again and sat so he was more next to her so he could watch her work. She dropped her head and sighed. “I just want to go through my trials, even though I know I’m not ready.”

“What makes you think you’re not ready?” He asked.

“I clearly don’t have any of my emotions under control. My respect for authority of the council is basically nonexistent. Even more after today.  And physical control of the force is… how do I put this… tentative at best.” She said as she raised her head and looked over at him. Anakin smiled a little.

“Emotions are gonna happen. We all have slip ups.” He said. “And if authority was measured in the tests, then I wouldn’t have passed.” He said. Kladinestra laughed.

“True.” She muttered. She screwed in the last adjustment. “Alright R7, test it out for me bud.” She said as she pulled her hands out. The droid moved the attachment around and beeped in satisfaction causing both Jedi to chuckle. Kladinestra pulled her hands back to herself with a sigh. She didn’t know what she could do next, the speeder was on beyond repair for her, and she didn’t want to go back up to face the rest of the temple. She really just wanted to nap. But she looked over at the master sitting next to her, he was looking at the droid and then to her.

“How are your saber skills?” He asked.

“I’ve managed to best my master six times.” She replied. She was quite proud of that fact, though she admitted it wasn’t a difficult thing to accomplish, her master wasn’t the best saber fighter.

“I’ve always found that slashing something with a saber can be a good way to deal with stress.” Anakin said. He stood up and offered a hand to her. R7 beeped in fear and Kladinestra laughed.

“I’m sure he wasn’t talking about you R7.” She said as she accepted his hand to help her stand. “Are you suggesting a sparring match Master Skywalker?” She asked with a little bit of a grin.

“I think it’ll give you something to do that isn’t dealing with authority.” He replied, his own smile mirroring hers. Kladinestra didn’t have to think too much about it.

“Count me in but prepared to have your ass handed to you Skywalker.” She said as she ran for the elevator. Anakin laughed and ran after her.

“Don’t get cocky.” He said.

“Me, cocky? Never!” Kladinestra said with a tone that was starting to lighten from her doom, gloom, and anger.

Kladinestra was a lot of things as she made her way up from the hanger. She was still tired, but she was lighter, joyful, and above all she started to find herself becoming happier again.


End file.
